jared, if president obama were the one holding the debt ceiling hostage, right as the housing, auto, and retail sectors seem to be rebounding, wouldn't the house republicans be calling the president's tactics those of a socialist who wanted to bring down the american economy? >> i think they would, and i appreciate your bringing the economy into it. the president did that yesterday. the more we talk about the debt ceiling after obsessing over the fiscal cliff, the more i look at the whole thing as a massive dangling the key or, you know, don't look over here at the real economy, which is where people would really like policymakers to be dealing, but look at this so-called fiscal crisis which doesn't even exist. the president very clearly, and i thought helpfully, spelled out the numbers yesterday and actually to get from where we are, given the spending cuts and tax increases that we've implemented so far, to where we need to be to stabilize the debt, is not that heavy a lift if we had a functional politics that was actually paying attention to what needs to be done instead of creati